Debbie Schäfer’s dictatorial powers

IT WAS interesting to read Debbie Schäfer’s open (if naïve) admission that she was exercising the dictatorial powers vested in her by the Western Cape Schools Act (“Collaboration schools within the law and our best option”, Cape Times, November 15).

She tells us that it is in terms of that Act that she, as MEC, is “empowered to make policy”. And so, despite whatever reservations the people of the Western Cape might have, she considers herself the final arbiter of our interests. Thus, because she “deems it necessary”, we will have collaboration schools in the Western Cape; our schools will be permitted to sell booze; schools in the impoverished communities will arbitrarily be shut down; and educators, of the calibre of Mr Brian Isaacs, will be dismissed for daring to speak truth to power, while those guilty of crude, blatant racism in the leafy suburbs will be gently tapped on the wrist.

I have to keep reminding myself that I live in a democracy. When a party (in this case, the DA) uses its majority in the legislature to appropriate to itself arbitrary discretionary powers, which it will wield against the interests of the very people who voted them that majority, then I say we are not living in a democracy, we are living in a “demockery”.

As the saying goes, “you get the government you deserve”. Maybe we deserve a government like the DA in the Western Cape because we, the people of the Western Cape, have not exercised our real class power to build a government for the people, of the people and by the people. But it’s never too late. Charles Thomas Claremont